Kenya: Engage Public Before Scrapping KCPE

The Kenya National Examination Council will today release the results of last year's Kenya Certificate of Primary Education. For the thousands of candidates who sat the exam and their parents, today will finally bring an end to two months of anxiety.

Education minister Mutula Kilonzo has said he supports the scrapping of KCPE altogether and would prefer that children continue on until Form Four without being eliminated at Standard 8 as they are too young to do anything with the primary school certificate.

Some parents and teachers union are however opposed to the exam being abolished as they feel the children will take the examinations less seriously. They do not think the school based continuous assessment exams are rigorous enough to harness and direct the children's potential.

It is quite disconcerting that this issue, which goes to the core of the country's development and the aspirations of almost every Kenyan, is not being addressed properly. Least of all by any of the presidential candidates now on the campaigning for votes.

The ministry must urgently engage stakeholders in discussing this issue. We all realize how changing the education policy on a whim of a politician has cost this country. We do not want a repeat of this.

Quote of the day: "Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking." William Butler Yeats, Irish prose writer, dramatist and poet who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923 died on January 28,1939.

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